Husband woke up at 4:45 this morning and got up to follow reporting on the US Presidential election returns.
I went back to sleep and didn’t join him until a more civilized 5:45 am, but regardless, there we were, foregoing much-needed sleep to studiously eye the electoral college estimates and state-by-state tallies.
Why? Because we care. We care deeply.
I’m not going to share with you whether we were on TeamWin or not, because that isn’t the point.
Neither is whom we each cast our ballot for or why. How we voted isn’t the issue here; how we feel about our country is.
The popular vote count ticked ever highward and key states were called in favor of one presidential nominee or the other.
Finally Mitt Romney conceded to Barack Obama, both contenders speaking first to each other, and then to their devoted followers.
I am always in awe of the ability of the losing candidate to publicly concede defeat after an exhaustive, often bruising campaign. I empathize with putting your heart, soul, time, energy and effort into a cause for months (indeed years) on end, only to have it snuffed out in the final hours.
Romney kept his concession remarks brief but gracious; Obama kept his appreciative and conciliatory, attempting to forge a united electorate out of bitter rivalries.
That’s what you do when you transition from candidate to President: you set aside your role as outward face of your political party and take on, or in the case of an incumbent President, continue on with your role as leader of the American people.
Whether they agree with you or not. Whether they believe in your way ahead or not. Whether they share your views or not. Whether they like you or not. And for Obama, that means roughly 48% of the voting citizenship.
Much will be made of what the Republicans should have done or neglected to do or of the Democratic ticket taking such a decisive victory in the Electoral College (currently anticipated to be 303 to 206 electoral votes); of the shifting definitions of the tags ‘independent’, ‘moderate’, ‘political center’; of voter turnout and the voting predilections of various sub-groups by gender, age, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, religion, sexual orientation, geographic region.
You can talk all you want about trends, shifts, nuances, subtleties and clearcut changes in voting patterns.
Those endorsing the victor will celebrate the results; those supporting the losing candidate will lament them. There will be extensive analysis by both sides of what worked (and didn’t), what resonated (and didn’t), what mattered (and didn’t).
But there is no getting around a simple fact: asI write this, out of the estimated 115 million Americans who voted in this election, the winning candidate did so by approximately 2.3 million votes. In a country of 320 million people.
Almost 59 million people voted for Obama; nearly 57 million of his fellow countrymen did not. Now he must shift gears and do his best to lead the nation, a divided nation. A deeply divided nation.
He must spend his days and nights working tirelessly to move the country forward: bolster a sagging economy showing minimal improvement in fits and starts; get the unemployed, underemployed and those who have simply given up looking back to meaningful, productive, lucrative work; deal with myriad national and global political, economic and security challenges; put forward legislation to try to solve problems, mend fences and improve the lives not merely of the most vulnerable and fragile members of society, but of everyone.
A couple months ago I read a post that was starting to go viral at the time. I saw it on Facebook, but it was getting shared across a wide array of social media venues.
In it, the author calmly reminded his or her family, friends, coworkers, associates and/or followers that when they castigated or demonized members of his (or her) political persuasion – which remained unstated – they were, in essence, speaking directly to him (or her).
If you vocalized that conservatives or liberals were ignorant, arrogant, unfeeling, stupid, uncaring, unsophisticated, holier-than-thou, idiotic, unpatriotic, lazy, hard-hearted or any other of a long list of slurs, it was as if you were saying it to him/her when you chatted before the morning staff meeting, over coffee or at lunch, while picking up your children from school or dropping off their child from carpooling, over drinks at happy hour or over dinner in their home.
You can’t spew negativity at a group and then turn around and say ‘oh, but I didn’t mean you’. If you know someone whose political views differ from yours – at home, at work, at your place of worship or in your classroom, on the soccer field or at the ballpark, while volunteering or sharing a hobby or other interest – and care about them in any way, you can’t ascribe negative connotations to followers of those political beliefs but claim that the person you know and care about is an exception.
Enough with the negativity. Enough with taking one issue and making it your litmus test for acceptance or rejection.
Enough with the articles and speeches and talking heads telling us that one party believes in religion and values and security while the other believes in jobs and personal freedoms and acceptance.
Enough already.
Because when I look across my extended family, across the friends and acquaintances I’ve accumulated over the years, across the colleagues I’ve toiled next to in various jobs over a couple of careers, I know that we all care deeply about a whole host of issues, none of which are the sole purview of one political group or another.
Just as none of the values bandied about belong exclusively to one group and not the other.
It’s about respect, decency, democracy.
We are all good, kind, hardworking, caring people who want the best for our families, our communities, our nation, our world. We may differ as to the sources of various problems and societal ills, or the policy prescriptives to remedy these challenges, even the legislative and judicial fixes and the very people we want to see creating that change.
So when we badmouth this group or that, this party or that, this candidate or that, this individual or that, we are talking trash about those we respect, care about, perhaps even love.
I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t difficult challenges ahead. Of course there are, and always will be.
But I’m sick and tired of the ‘us vs. them’ mentality. And believe me, it goes well beyond the United States. It is pernicious and infects people, groups, countries around the world.
Wars have started over as much, not to mention bigotry, persecution, alienation, objectification, conflict, violence.
I’m tired of the snide comments and smug cross-cultural insults floating through the blogosphere, media and social media. Because when you criticize another nationality, another group, another faction, you are perpetuating this dark whorl of negativity.
I don’t slap labels on your views, your religious preference, your causes or pet issues, your nationality, your political systems. I don’t wonder aloud or online why ‘you people’ don’t do this or try that or can’t get your act together on the other.
When you do so, not only are you ignoring the complex and complicated roots of so many issues while advertising your own lack of cultural understanding (and please note that I said understanding, not acceptance or agreement), you’re really labeling me, and those I love. Whether you meant to or not.
Enough already.
No more ‘us vs. them’. There’s far too much to do in this world to make it better, to ease pain and suffering and promote equality and justice.
Starting now, it’s We the People.
I hope you’ll join me.
[Image credit: Chuck Felix, portfolio 303, freedigitalphotos.net]
Do you listen to the This American Life podcasts with Ira Glass? They just broadcast a terrific one about how people on different sides of the political divide interact with each other (or not) and how they can start to do so more constructively. Highly recommended!
I haven’t ventured out of the house yet this morning, but I’ll be interested to see the reaction of my Republican friends today. So far, only my Democrat / liberal-leaning friends have made any noise on Facebook!
I haven’t heard Ira Glass’s podcasts but they sound interesting. In some respects it’s been a little quieter on social media, at least until poor @KristinNeel_ lit up the world with her ridiculous tweet that went viral. It was about wanting to leave the US and move to Australia because at least their president is a good Christian man (except that it’s a prime minister, she’s a woman and a declared atheist).
This was the most amazing post I have read in a long time. Thank you for saying what I’ve been silently thinking for a long time! Well done.
Hey thanks, Jennifer, I really appreciate that.
So beautifully written!!!! I almost cried….. I knew you were a good writer, but this is amazing writing!!! I will pass this along and hope many read this and get the same shiver I did …….
Lauren, that is so kind of you. Now you’re going to make me cry! Thank you for enjoying this piece and sharing it, too.
Hi Linda,
Well said! I believe in ‘We the People’!! Thanks so much for having the courage to say it out loud!
Patti
Why thank you Patti, hope all is going well.
Well said!!!
Thanks Aisha
Hear, hear!
I’ve struggled these past weeks with some of the abuse thrown at voters on one side of the divide or the other. Felt offended when followers of the candidate I didn’t vote for talk as if me, and people like me, are morons. We see things differently that’s all.
It is ‘We the people..’ all of us, irrespective of creed or color who make the nation what it is. We are lucky to live in a democracy, to have the vote. We should exercise it. What we shouldn’t do is castigate others who view the world from a slightly different perspective – it is their right to do so. It does not mean they care less for their country or community.
After all, the only side to be on is it is TeamUSA.
The more you get out and see the world beyond your doorstep (even if remaining within a country as large as the US), you almost have to work hard not to realize that bright, kind, dedicated people can and do disagree on precisely where to go and how to get there. It’s certainly great for research, invention and entrepreneurial spirit!
Well said, Linda. Totally agree.
I also thought Romney’s speech was good – it was short, conciliatory and to the point. Exactly what a concession speech should be. I felt for the man. It must be a tough thing to have to do and you could sense his disappointment.
Obama’s speech was okay. He’s a great orator but I wanted him to talk about the exceptionally tough times ahead and the hard road Americans now need to travel to get back to a steadier footing. He gave a traditional and appreciative speech but I wanted more depth I suppose. I read this piece today which I thought summed it up best – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/07/election-obama-victory-speech-poignant
So he inherits an electorate split 50/50, a Republican House of Reps, and no real change to the status quo in Washington, plus a looming fiscal cliff and a public who didn’t warm to his policy roadshow travels across the country. You summed it up perfectly: “He must spend his days and nights working tirelessly to move the country forward”. And you know how easy this is to achieve in government on a good day = not very!
Interesting times ahead and hopefully a more cooperative mood with a shared goal of putting the country to rights. And that can be no bad thing! 🙂
It’s truly a wonder that anyone in their right mind would want to run for President, let alone win and have to govern. A truly thankless job, at times. My sense of Obama’s speech was heavy on the trying to bring the country together and light on the doom and gloom. Plenty of time for that as the media and pundits were screaming about the fiscal cliff the next morning.
I couldn’t agree more. We’ve been (thankfully) fairly removed from a large part of the media vitriol this time around, but the sad part is that we got so much (via FaceBook) from friends and relatives. MrL and I keep our political opinions pretty much to ourselves except to say that we both try very hard to live out the (not exclusively Christian) values of compassion, love, and charity. What fascinated me was that most of my politically -minded FaceBook friends on both sides of the aisle all assumed that I believed exactly as they did. For the most part, these people are loving, compassionate, and would give you the shirts off their backs if they saw you in need. But – depending on which political camp they fell in – they all assumed that anyone voting on the other side must, by default, be either lazy, blind, heartless, intolerant, overzealous, or a proponent of Nazism. I honestly wish our political system was more like the one in Germany, where any political party can be represented in the Bundestag as long as it gets 5% of the vote. It seems like this would be a better answer to the diversity that exists in the US…
Thanks Caroline. It is rather funny that people posting their views either assume everyone receiving that agrees with them OR they don’t care (neither of which is particularly sensible). The Dutch have a representational government but as one Dutch friend explained ‘our parties all get along but it means that there is only incremental tinkering around the edges, never any major move forward’. It seems the history and culture of each country are affected by the type of government, and vice versa. So I think we’re stuck 🙂